


five times Mickey Bricks didn't work with Neal Caffrey (and two times he did)

by thestarsarewinning



Category: Hustle, White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: 5 Times, Canon Compliant, Con Artists, Crossover, Episode: s01e10 Vital Signs, Gen, Neal Caffrey's one of the greats and so is Mickey, Post-Canon, White Collar Crime, but like this fits in with the plot of both tv shows and their timelines, but like you can pick up the gist easily enough if you haven't seen it, if that's really actually applicable, references to a lot of Hustle episodes, they'd definitely have a working history, you should watch it though Hustle's great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28634388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsarewinning/pseuds/thestarsarewinning
Summary: Neal Caffrey and Mickey Bricks are world class conmen. Sometimes, they work together.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	five times Mickey Bricks didn't work with Neal Caffrey (and two times he did)

**Author's Note:**

> so this is super late to both fandoms, but lockdown 3 has me rewatching all my old tv shows and this was just begging to be written
> 
> obviously, i have no right to anything, i'm just borrowing a few things to play house. 
> 
> see the endnotes for the timeline/episodes referenced

1-

“We need a forger,” Albert says, and Mickey’s heart sinks. 

“Not just any forger,” Ash points out, “We need someone who can forge an original Mondrian. Preferably one that can pass authentication. I used to know a guy who could have done it but he was chased out of England by the police to Benidorm, what- Three years ago?”

“Four,” Stacie sighs, nodding when Ash snaps his fingers. She hums thoughtfully, casting a look up at Mickey, the kind of look he knows all too well, and she shifts in her seat. “What about-“ 

They’ve worked together for too long, pulled too many jobs, know too many of the same people for Mickey not to know what, or rather who, she’s about to suggest. 

“No,” he grits out, though she ignores him anyway. 

“What about Caffrey? Neal could do it, you know he could.” Stacie doesn’t even try not to sound fond as she speaks - a fondness Mickey remembers getting them into more trouble than Neal Caffrey has ever been worth - and she smirks when Mickey rolls his eyes.

“He’s good, Mick, you know he’d do it,” Ash jumps in, and Mickey almost wishes they were at Eddie’s so he could escape to the bar and hide behind a whiskey. 

Before Mickey can make that wish a reality, Danny asks, “Who’s Neal? Why haven’t I heard of Caffrey before?”

“The American?” Albert asks over Danny, like he isn’t and like he wasn’t the one to introduce Mickey and Neal all those years ago, and Mickey thinks again about making a break for it. 

“Yes, the American,” he says instead, ignoring Danny when he asks again, following it with, “Though I’d rather not involve Neal.”

It’s uncharitable, really downright unreasonable, to not even consider Neal, and it’s maybe the wrong call if they want to pull this job off, get the money, and break the jinx that Mickey knows is following them, but he’s relieved all the same when Albert shakes his head. 

“Last I heard, Neal wasn’t in the country. Headed to Copenhagen, or somewhere. Had a friend he owed a job to.” Albert sounds thoughtful, and drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair before he looks up at Mickey, a look on his face that says Mickey isn’t going to like this option either. “Tip Jones is back in town. Tangled up in some nasty business with a gallery owner and the police, but he’s got the skill.”

“Won’t be cheap,” Ash warns, folding his arms and eyeing both Albert and Mickey, “And I’ve heard he’s about as charming as a dead fish.” 

There’s something more to Albert’s look, a different kind of meaning that serves as a warning, an out, and an apology, but Mickey levels Albert’s look with one of his own. “If he’ll deliver within our timeframe, as far as I’m concerned, Tip will do. Set up a meeting, Albert. But- Don’t tell him what it’s about. I want to meet him first.”

**

2-

“You know who would do this better than me, Mick? I’m doing my best, but-“

“No, Ash-“ Mickey’s beginning to think he’s the victim of a conspiracy. He knows exactly where Ash is going with this, and he doesn’t want to hear it. 

Unfortunately, Ash is one of what was, until recently, a very short list of people willing to question Mickey, so it’s not exactly surprising when Ash sets his tweezers down, abandoning the cobweb he’s been valiantly coating their wine bottle with and not-so-patiently says, “This is right up Caffrey’s street, and you know it. Short of the Franklin bottle, there’s not a bottle of wine out there he can’t fake.”

Ash isn’t wrong, Neal Caffrey has the kind of talent that seems to effortlessly expand to whatever field he turns his interest to, but Mickey has his eye on the bigger picture. “He’s caught the attention of the FBI, Ash. He’s got them, Interpol, just about everyone else, interested in him. I don’t want him anywhere near us.”

“And, what, the old bill never bother us?” 

“That’s different and you know it.” Mickey doesn’t get headaches, but he thinks that maybe about to change. There’s a dull, stabbing sensation behind his temple, and even thinking about asking Albert to call Neal Caffrey - who, rumour last had it, was seen in Scotland, interested in the McNally Solitaire - is making it worse. 

Ash has a frown on his face that suggests he’s considering pushing the point further, and Mickey doesn’t have the time for this. Danny, he knows, is getting cold feet about this, about being Keyes’ son, and he needs to keep him on board, especially since they’ve come this far. Mickey doesn’t have Danny’s reservations, Johnny Keyes is not a nice man and he’s played into their hands every step of the way, but Danny could still screw this up for them and Mickey wants to get it over with. 

He wanders around the workbench to Ash, clapping him on the shoulder as he examines his work so far. “You’re doing fine, Ash, anyway. Why call in Caffrey, when you’ve done the job just as well?” 

**

3-

“Hang on- We can’t nick the Crown Jewels!” 

It’s not quite the reaction Mickey had been hoping for, especially not before he’s managed to tell them the rest of the plan, and he glances around the room as Danny continues to splutter.

Mickey wants to laugh when he meets Ash’s gaze, because this is the kind of score he and Ash used to plan out after drinks at the bar, before Mickey went to prison, before either of them were married, let alone divorced, before their team included Danny, and back then it had been placed firmly in the category of impossible. Ash remembers this, it’s clearly written across his face, and Mickey throws him a wink as he asks, “Why not?” 

“Why not? I’ll tell you why not- Well, it’s unpatriotic, for a start-“ Danny’s the kind of outraged the way Mickey remembers his gran sounding when Diana and Charles divorced, upset and ruffled about what’s proper, and he grins. 

“Besides, I don’t fancy being banged up in the Tower of London for the next three hundred years,” Danny adds, and Mickey’s smile falls. 

“For once, I think Danny might have point,” Stacie chimes in, and the adrenaline Mickey had felt as he’d surveilled the Tower and the transfer of the jewels, as he’d stood in front of them all with the biggest job of the century, fades. It gets worse as Ash leaves behind their shared nostalgia, and Albert, despite being the one to have brought the job to Mickey, sobers too. 

It’s a job Mickey can’t do on his own, and he sits at the bar with Eddie, wondering if, for a minute, he’d gone too far. 

He’s not sulking, he absolutely isn’t, but the relief he feels when the others join him is dizzying, even more so when they hear him out for a second time. By the time they’re sat around their table, drinks ordered, Stacie still laughing at him, the high Mickey had felt earlier is back, and this is what Mickey likes about the con, the camaraderie and the moment when the pieces begin to fall into place. 

The brightness that comes with a good plan and a willing audience dims for a second time, however, when Albert asks, “Could we use another, do you think? An extra pair of hands couldn’t hurt, not with a plan this big.”

“Scottish Ray’s in town,” Ash adds, ignoring the complicated face Danny pulls. “He specialises in high ticket items, don’t he?”

“What about Richards? He owes us one anyway,” Stacie says, and Mickey would almost be tempted to agree, jewels being his forte, but he’s preoccupied with working out the angles, again, trying seeing if they’ve left themselves exposed and really could use someone else. 

He’s unable to see it, if they have, if he’s left them open to being caught, and he’d say no to whoever they suggest next anyway. The fact that it’s Neal Caffrey that Albert suggests is merely a coincidence. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Mickey starts, and Albert sighs. 

“Caffrey would be ideal, I think. And his friend’s in town too, the paranoid one - he’s always useful,” He tries, and Mickey can feel his resolve begin to waiver. 

Mozzie is useful - skilled enough to give Ash a run for his money, twice as knowledgable, and with a disdain for any form of authority that means he’s practically a ghost. He is, however, entirely too susceptible to conspiracies, and there are rumours following him that make Mickey uneasy. He doesn’t like violence, his own history included, even when a con calls for it, when Danny fakes a punch with too much enthusiasm for Mickey’s liking, and no one earns the name ‘the Dentist of Detroit’ without good reason. 

Mozzie also comes with Neal, a package deal, and Mickey shakes his head. “Not on this one.” 

“I thought Caffrey was a forger,” Danny asks once Eddie’s dropped off their drinks, complaining about their tab, and Mickey briefly imagines a life where, on his release from prison, he’d caught a taxi to Heathrow and settled somewhere sunny. 

“He is,” Stacie says, saving Mickey from having to explain, “and he’s an exceptional one at that. He’s also a thief. Brilliant at it, and he’s a fan of the long con. Last month he was renting out floor space at Trump Tower.”

“Back to Donald Trump himself,” Ash cuts in, and Danny scoffs, but before Stacie can kick him, Albert swats him with his newspaper. “I knew him when he was just starting out in this business, before he’d made his own friends. ‘Pal of mine, Joey, taught the kid three card monte, said he was a natural.”

**

4-

“I’m going to kill him - I mean it, Ash. I’m actually going to kill Danny.” Mickey once, post prison, pre-Danny, had been worried that he was losing his edge, that he was no longer the brash twenty-year-old that could cut and run at any moment that he used to be. 

Now, as he and Ash carve their way along Paradise Road, dodging the crowds, it’s a toss up between whether Mickey is relieved that he can still make a dash for it through a crowded hotel lobby and out through the doors ahead of security without warning, and if the only reason he’s made it two blocks in dress shoes and his favourite suit is actual, burning rage at Danny, for screwing up the con, mixing up the cases and losing all their money. 

“Yeah, well, you always say that, and you haven’t yet,” Ash shouts, and they turn cut down a side street. They haven’t yet managed to lose their tail, and, idly, Mickey wants to be impressed. In London, hotel security have never chased them this far, yet, in Las Vegas, it’s been a solid half mile and they’re still being followed. 

Mickey ditches his suit jacket, makes Ash do the same, and by the time they emerge on Austin Street, hopping onto the monorail, he’s fairly confident they’ve lost the guards from the Radisson. 

“You know what our problem is now?” Mickey asks, leaning back against his seat, letting his head hit the window of the shuttle.

Ash glances around, glaring at the other passengers, lowering his voice as he says, “We’ve got no money, all our suitcases are still at the hotel, with our passports, and we’ve got no way out of the country?” 

“Exactly.”

“Even I can’t see a way out of this one. We’re gonna need some help, Mick.” Ash scrubs a hand over his face, searching his pockets before muttering ‘shit’ when he remembers that he tossed his phone on the way out of the hotel. “Who do we know, who might be able to help? Albert got any contacts? What’s his name, Pepper? He any good?”

“Joey? No. If we were casing a place, maybe, but we need passports, good ones.” Mickey’s been all over, always liked America as a second home, but he’s never quite managed to build up a network here. There are, however, exceptions to that, as reluctant as Mickey has been to turn to him before. “Neal. Great with passports, and I heard Caffrey had a cache in Colorado - he might be close enough to help us before they circulate our photos to every hotel and airport in the state.”

Ash sucks his teeth, shaking his head abruptly. “Didn’t you hear? Caffrey’s banged up, got four years. Finally found that girl of his, but the Feds used her to get to him. Only got him on bond forgery, mind. And that was years ago, remember?”

Mickey does remember, vaguely. Neal had given him one, once, to cash in an emergency. Neal had also made one of Mickey’s best fake IDs, before running off with half a million pounds worth of stolen manuscripts, leaving Mickey in The Hague to lie to the police.

**

5- 

Mickey’s trying to make it in America. 

On his own, this time. It’s part of the plan, he’s working his way around, well, everywhere. He’s got designs on making it to Sydney, eventually, but he’s going it alone, and it’s going great. 

There’s just one problem, one con he could really use another set of hands for, but Danny’s running the team back in London now, Stacie with him, and Ash is in London too. And even if Mickey asked, Albert can’t get through security at JFK any more, no matter the name he uses. He’s got contacts of his own now, in America, but everyone he’s worked with recently are off running their own jobs or laying low outside of New York, and Mickey can’t wait. 

After two drinks and finally admitting defeat on his attempt to rework the job, he ends up using a payphone to call the last number he definitely knew Neal Caffrey had been using. There’s the expected beep as the call is forwarded to a different number, then forwarded on again, and then he reaches the voicemail for ‘Edmund Spencer’s Antiquities and Restorations’. 

It’s a long shot - Neal is still in prison, he knows - but Mickey leaves a message anyway, and then three days later he’s wandering around Central Park, following chalk arrows to a bench. 

There’s a cough from the bench’s occupant, and even with the bucket hat pulled low over the man’s face, Mickey recognises Mozzie anywhere, noticing the lack of a bad toupee, the only real difference in his appearance, despite the years it’s been. He waits the requested six feet away, and tries not to audibly sigh as Mozzie calls out, “There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.”

“I love not Man the less, but Nature more,” Mickey answers as instructed and steps towards the bench, sitting just close enough that they can talk quietly, but not so close that Mozzie gets anxious. 

Despite the qualms Mickey might have about Mozzie’s reputation in certain areas, they pulled enough jobs together back before a lot of things had gone to shit for him to remember Mozzie’s distinct, and strict, boundaries. He had, however, forgotten about Mozzie’s penchant for Russian military surplus equipment, and the scanner Mozzie waves over him makes Mickey want to reconsider the job at hand entirely. 

The score is big, though, and there’s a certain flare to the con that will make it a good story, if he can pull it off, so Mickey stays, though he draws the line at handing over the ID he’s currently using. 

Mozzie’s not a front man, however good at the long con he might be, and he’s quiet throughout Mickey’s pitch, right until Mickey gets to what they’re going to be selling. 

“The Statue of Liberty? Lady Liberty herself? You know it’s only worth just over two hundred grand in scrap, right?” 

Mickey grins. “We’re not selling the statue for scrap. I have a buyer.” 

Suddenly, Mozzie’s interested enough that he removes his hat, looking Mickey in the eye for the first time with an expression that reminds Mickey of a similar afternoon, discussing the security of the National Gallery in D.C and a certain Raphael. 

  
**

+1

Albert doesn’t like the Netherlands. 

When the message gets passed along to him, a chance of a place on a job, he sends Mickey in his place, muttering something about a casino in Scheveningen and how no request, no matter the friend, could get him to go back. 

Rachel’s not impressed when he cancels their date, but Mickey has nothing against Holland, not yet, and he likes Neal Caffrey, from what he knows of him. Albert ’s fond of him, and he’d pulled Caffrey in when they were going after a whole group of bankers. It’s enough for Mickey to actually look forward to working with him again.

Back in London, Albert had called Neal last minute, needing him to be another investor, and he’d shown up for the convincer calling himself Nick and wearing a suit Mickey still envies. 

Caffrey opens his hotel room door wearing a black turtle neck, and ushers Mickey inside. 

His friend - the short one, paranoid and unfathomably insistent on wearing bad toupees - is already there, working on what looks like an alarm system, clipping wires, and he nods awkwardly at Mickey when he notices him. Mickey forgets to return the gesture, too distracted by the cages of pigeons in the far corner of the room. 

“What on earth-“ He begins, but Neal waves him off, ushering him over to one of the room’s twin beds, which is currently covered in painstakingly drawn out plans, blue prints, and what looks, to Mickey’s still-learning eye, to be pages of manuscripts, delicately aged but unmistakably recently illustrated. 

“What do you think?” Neal asks, and Mickey shakes his head. Albert hadn’t mentioned what the job was exactly, but Mickey hadn’t anticipated it essentially being a smash and grab, albeit one involving biblical manuscripts from the National Library of the Netherlands. 

“I’m not a thief,” Mickey says, and he means it. 

Albert has drilled into him the first rule of the con - you can’t cheat an honest man - and Mickey hasn’t ever crossed that line. 

Corrupt stockbrokers are one thing; stealing - stealing art, diamonds, anything for the sake of it - is another. And, unless he’s mistaken, Neal wants the manuscripts, not to turn over half a dozen buyers with a well spun story and a fake, but for the sake of taking them, to prove he can. 

“I’m not a thief,” he repeats.

“You don’t have to be,” Neal says, and he pulls a sheet of paper out from the bottom of the pile, handing it to Mickey. “But I am. You just need to be our inside man on this one.”

Mickey studies the floor plan of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, trying not to let his appreciation for Neal’s work show on his face. His entrance is marked out through the basement, with a clear path through the exhibition room to storage, and an exit via the roof. After their first job, after drinks, and after they’d walked away with two hundred grand, Neal had told him a story involving the Met and a parachute, only, at the time, Mickey had chalked it up as an entertaining elaboration. Now, he notes the gear laid out on the room’s other bed and tries to hide his surprise. 

He might not like that they’re there for the Antioch Manuscripts, but Mickey can appreciate a good plan when he sees one, or at least a _daring_ plan. He’s also incredibly good at this, looking at the angles, going through architects drawings, working the security measures until there are no more obstacles, and he’s there for a reason, or at least a reason other than the fact that Caffrey needs someone to wear a suit and lie convincingly. “How are you going to get the vault combinations?”

It had been bold to expect Neal - Neal Caffrey, of all people - to stop, caught out, but Mickey hadn’t expected him to laugh at the question, a little too pleased as he juts his chin towards the bird cages. 

“That’s what they’re for.”

**

+2 

“I heard you were dead.” 

The voice behind him makes Mickey freeze, wondering if he can make it to the back exit of Little Red Door. The bar is too busy, however, for a subtle exit, and Mickey is trapped at the bar by virtue of his tab, or lack thereof. He’s still holding his card, waiting to pay for one of the most over priced whiskey’s he’s found in Paris, and Little Red Door is nice enough that he doesn’t want to be barred. 

A subtle glance behind him is enough for Mickey to relax, though not completely. He waits until he’s joined at the bar by a man who’s as much a ghost as Mickey is to say, “Funny, I heard the same about you.”

Neal Caffrey flashes him a smile, and Mickey feels the ever present urge to punch him in the face - a leftover reflex from the fourth and fifth jobs they worked together, back when Mickey was willing to do anything to bring Caffrey’s ego down to a manageable level - but he restrains himself and offers to buy him a drink instead. 

One glass of wine later, and he and Neal are sat at a corner table near the back of the bar, out of the way enough that Mickey knows no one will overhear him as he raises his glass in a toast. 

“To death,” he says, and Neal smiles, shaking his head, even as he raises his glass. 

“To freedom,” Neal returns, and Mickey nods. Life without living in fear of Madani Wasem finding him - or any of his other marks, for that matter - has been a relief, and he knows enough about Neal, still, to know he means it.

“What brings you to Paris?” Neal asks, taking a sip of his drink, and Mickey doesn’t really have an answer. 

There’s nowhere else for him to go. He made it to Sydney, eventually, before, and London’s burned for him now. Emma’s still in Milan with Stacie and Sean, Danny’s gone back to his island, and Albert and Ash have retired. Again. 

“Seeing the sights,” Mickey settles on, and it’s almost true. He can appreciate Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre without trying to sell them. 

It’s a good enough answer that Neal’s face lights up, his smile taking on edge just bright enough that Mickey thinks that, maybe, he’s going to have to watch out for carrier pigeons and Interpol. “There’s an Albrecht Altdorfer in the Louvre.” 

“I’m not a thief,” Mickey reminds him. Neal barks out a laugh, but it dies quickly, replaced by an incomprehensible expression and unexpected silence. 

“Neither am I.” Neal says eventually, chasing back the last of his drink. “Not anymore. Not really.” 

And Mickey’s heard enough information from enough people to know what Neal means - there’s a reason he’d avoided New York after Neal had been released from prison. It was something anyone with common sense knew to avoid, the FBI’s White Collar division working with one of their own. 

Mickey thinks he probably already knows what Neal’s doing here - you can’t fake your death to the FBI and continue to run around New York - but he decides to ask anyway. “So what are you doing in Paris?” 

“Living,” is the answer Neal gives, “Quietly.” 

It rings true, or seems to, at least - Neal’s the most contained Mickey’s ever seen him - and Mickey’s done his fair share of laying low to know it’s possible. He’s spent months without viewing every person he meets as a potential mark, pretending to be finished with pulling jobs and working the con, but it’s always been just that, really; pretending. 

Besides, Neal’s wearing a well-cut suit, he’d counted the steps to the exits when they sat down, and he knows that the Louvre’s Petite Galerie is exhibiting ‘The Advent of the Artist’. 

Mickey sips his whiskey, trying to keep his tone casual as he says, “Any chance you still paint? Only, I hear there’s an Albrecht Altdorfer in the Louvre, and I might be able to line up a buyer. Maybe two." 

**Author's Note:**

> 1- takes place around s01 e03 of BBC Hustle  
> 2- Hustle s02 e02  
> 3- Hustle s02 e06  
> 4- takes place between series 2 and 3 of Hustle, technically occurs around the flashback scenes of s03 e01  
> 5- set nebulously around series 4 of Hustle, when Mickey has left the team, but before the scenes at the start of s05 e01
> 
> +1 pre-series for both Hustle and White Collar, based around Neal's alleged theft of the Antioch Manuscripts mentioned in Vital Signs, White Collar s01 e10  
> +2 post series for both Hustle and White Collar 
> 
> other mentions:  
> Bottlenecked, White Collar s01 e12 - Neal does forge the Franklin bottle  
> Forging Bonds, White Collar s02 e11 - history of Neal’s bond forging  
> Judgement Day, White Collar s03 e016 - the Raphael mentioned is St George and the Dragon that Neal stole   
> Au Revior, White Collar s06 e06 
> 
> thanks for reading, i'd love it if you left me a comment x


End file.
